Category: Embroidery

“Stop Saying Sorry as a Shortcut” and Other Hard Truths by Sophie King

Contemporary artist Sophie King is exposing the flaws of the character perspective on women vs men and popping hard pills to swallow through the art of embroidery. She has been making waves on Instagram with her bold messages often emblazoned on fabric, sometimes flowers or pumpkins. The British artist is one of the many female […]

10 Contemporary Embroidery Artists Carrying on the Tradition

There’s no stopping embroidery. As more people discover the traditional craft, the more that it continues to grow and change. Although many people work in traditional stitches and application techniques, their use of contemporary imagery makes the age-old practice new and modern. Sol Kesseler’s work is an example of new-school embroidery reinterpreting techniques from hundreds […]

Suzanna Scott Turns Coin Purses into Symbols of Female Empowerment

Artist Suzanna Scott reconstructs everyday objects as powerful comments on gender and equality. Her most prominent is an ongoing series of works called “Coin Cunts,” in which coin purses are turned inside out and sewn to form colorful representations of female genitalia. “In our new reality of untruths and the resurgence of misogynistic and racist […]

Dissolving Boundaries: The Bio-Matter Art of Heather Komus

Heather Komus is a Winnipeg-based artist working with embroidery, found objects, plant matter, and animal matter (such as intestines, feathers, and hair) to explore the body as a permeable ecosystem. Fascinated by infestation and infection—the way microbes and spores penetrate the skin and colonize organs—her creations are like maps to a subdivided and multiplied body, […]

Tragic Heroines and Ghoulish Creatures by Memorial Stitches

Carrie Violet, aka Memorial Stitches, creates delicate drawings in thread. Completely self-taught, her embroidery is the culmination of her studies in fashion design and illustration. The small scenes, stitched only with black floss, feature macabre women, ghoulish bats, and are inspired by the “Victorian sentiment.” In an interview, Violet explains, “I’m drawn to both the […]

Take a Look at Jess de Wahls’ “Big Swinging Ovaries”

Artist Jess de Wahls currently stitches an ongoing embroidery project called “Big Swinging Ovaries.” Of it, she writes, “Over the past years I have been using my art increasingly to explore and incorporate feminism, gender equality as well as recycling.” Her hoop art collection features a stylized version of the female reproductive system that’s used as […]

Skeleton Embroideries Full of Life by Tinycup Needleworks

Britt Hutchinson, aka Tinycup Needleworks, has helped usher in embroidery’s renaissance over the past several years. Although the medium is commonly associated with the likes of bucolic blossoms, Hutchinson takes a darker turn and focuses on skeletons. The miniature embroideries feature intricately-stitched portraits of the bones as they interact with the land of the living. Hutchinson’s […]

Mysterious, Occult-Themed Embroidery by Adipocere

Adipocere is the alias of a Melbourne-based artist who makes occult-themed embroideries on linen (and sometimes his own hand). Black cats, oversized spiders, wise skeletons, and disemboweled maidens are some of his recurring characters, all stitched in a minimalist color palette. Death and darkness pervade his work (the word “adipocere” itself refers to a waxy […]

Hand-Stitched Embroideries Floating on “Disappearing” Fabric

Embroidery is very tactile medium. There’s little, if any, visual tricky that can come from the fuzziness of thread on fabric. Artist Katerina Marchenko pushes this idea to its limit, however, with her stitching on tulle. Stretched tightly across the embroidery hoop, the fabric seems to disappear as the layered thread and beading is all […]

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Nude Embroidery Art

Naked is how we arrived in this world, so why do we continue to feel so ashamed by our own bodies? That’s a question that many creatives are trying to answer through their embroidery art. Being fully nude represents vulnerability and to see yourself how you truly are—flaws and all. In symbolizing the naked body, artists […]